Tag Archives: Ditmar Awards

Over the Queen’s Birthday weekend, spec fic fans gathered for Continuum 13: Triskaidekaphilia. Continuum is always a great convention, and this year it was also the Aussie Natcon so it was also the host of the annual Ditmar Awards (the Australian popular vote awards for spec fic).

It was a great list of nominees, who all would have been deserving winners…the only problem being that not everyone can win! I was very happy to see a number of friends pick up an award, and especially thrilled that the 2016 Australian SF Snapshot won the Best Fan Publication in any Medium (a particularly competitive category).

Photo thanks to the awesomely fingernailed @thiefofcamorr Another lovely design from Kathleen Jennings

I’d been pretty sick in the week leading up to the convention, and didn’t see much of it at all. And, I didn’t expect to get pushed up front to say anything when we accepted the award! I doubt I made sense, but the gist of it was that it’s always an honour to be even a small part of something like the Snapshot. A lot of people put in a huge amount of their time and effort, and the result is something significant–a celebration of the incredible range of talent present in the Aussie scene.

Not at my best!

Congrats to all the winners!

Best Novel: The Grief Hole, Kaaron Warren, IFWG Publishing Australia.

Best Novella or Novelette: “Did We Break the End of the World?”, Tansy Rayner Roberts, in Defying Doomsday, Twelfth Planet Press.

The 2017 Ditmar Awards Ballot has been released, and I think it’s goimg to cause a lot of people some real problems in deciding who gets their vote–talk about a strong list!

I’m delighted to see a number of my friends and mentors on the list and, as always, honoured to see my name mentioned alongside them. I was grateful to be included in some great projects last year, and it’s wonderful to see them recognised

I have shamelessly stolen the full ballot from the official site, and at the end you’ll find the details of how to vote. Regardless of who you vote for, I do think it is important that everyone eligible to vote does so, because the more people engaged with the awards, the more they reflect the whole community.

Good luck to all the nominees, and whether you win or not, congratulations on your well deserved recognition!

The Ditmar subcommittee are pleased to announce that voting for the Australian SF (“Ditmar”) Award for 2017 is now open, and will remain open until one minute before midnight Melbourne time on Sunday, 14th of May, 2017 (ie. 11.59pm, GMT+10).

WILLIAM ATHELING JR. AWARD FOR CRITICISM OR REVIEW —————————————————————–

Kat Clay for essays and reviews in “Weird Fiction Review”. Tehani Croft & Marisol Dunham, for “Revisiting Pern: the great McCaffrey reread” review series. Tsana Dolichva, for reviews, in Tsana’s Reads and Reviews. Kate Forsyth, for The Rebirth of Rapunzel: a mythic biography of the maiden in the tower, FableCroft Publishing. Ian Mond, for reviews, in The Hysterical Hamster. Alexandra Pierce, for reviews, in Randomly Yours, Alex. Gillian Polack, for History and Fiction: Writers, their Research, Worlds and Stories, Peter Lang.

—

Votes can be sent via email to:

ditmars@sf.org.au

—

Note that some categories include more than five nominees due to tied nomination numbers, while others include fewer than five nominees, either because insufficient eligible nominees received the required minimum number of nominations for the category, or because ties meant that more than seven nominees would have appeared on the ballot.

The online voting system provides a passworded facility to adjust your vote at any time before the close of voting.

Alternatively, votes will be accepted via email to:

ditmars@sf.org.au

Postal ballots will be distributed in the near future.

Voting for the Ditmar Award is conducted in accordance with the rules specified here, and is open to members of Continuum 13(including supporting members) and to members of Contact 2016 who were eligible to vote in the 2016 Award.

Voting in all award categories is by the optional preferential system, and each eligible individual may vote only once. All ballots (including emailed ballots) should include the name and address of the voter. If you have questions regarding the ballot or voting procedure, please email ditmars@sf.org.au.

I’ve just gotten back from an amazing trip to the States that included attending Boskone, and I had an incredible time. But, as always, readjusting to normal life has been a struggle. Add that to a major deadline, and blogging has taken a back seat (btw, stayed tuned for some BIG news here soon!).

But, while I was away, the shortlists for both the Ditmar and Aurealis awards were released. I was delighted to get two nominations for the William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review. Big thanks to Tansy and Tehani for letting me be a part of those reviews, and to everyone who nominated us!

As always, it’s wonderful to see such a strong list–it says great things about the state of Aussie spec fic–and really nice that so many of the people are friends of mine. I am particularly happy to see Steve Cameron’s first Aurealis nomination. Not only has Steve been a good mate and a great support to me with my writing, he is one of our best “new” writers (Steve and I started around the same time, so to me that is “new”, but he has achieved a huge amount in that time and is certainly a well-established part of the scene). I am sure this only the first of many nominations for him.

Congratulations to all the nominees, everyone on there would be a deservng winner.

If you are eligible to vote for the Ditmars you can do so here–the more votes, the more representative the awards are!

I’m aware of the discussion online about the propriety of award eligibility posts. My personal opinion is that there is nothing wrong with making people aware of what you have done, there is so much out there that it is easy for people to lose track. Soliciting votes–well, that’s another thing and something that I have a huge problem with.

So, I’ll list what I have done, and if people think it is award worthy that’s wonderful. But, far more important is that people nominate and vote for whatever works they think worthy of note. The more people who participate in award, from the Ditmars to the Hugos, the more legitimacy it has, and the wider range of works noticed.

My works are right down the bottom of the post, but don’t feel you need to read down that far, the important message is: make sure you nominate and vote in the Ditmars! There are so many amazing people in the Aussie scene, and they are producing so much good work. The list of eligibles will blow your mind. So, if you have loved someone’s work last year, why not nominate them?

Something that I do want to highlight (that I didn’t create, but was part of, and that I think was amazing not through anything to do with me, but because of the creator) was Laura E. Goodin’s spectacular , “Cabinet of Oddities”. I am not sure what category Laura would be eligible for that under, but I wanted to highlight it as something worth considering (ETA: so far the most likely seems to be “Best Collected Work”). It really was one of the stand out experiences for me in an all round amazing year.

Ditmar Nominations Open

Nominations for the 2016 Australian SF (“Ditmar”) awards are now open and will remain open until one minute before midnight Brisbane time on Sunday, 31st of January, 2016 (ie. 11.59pm, GMT+10). Postal nominations must be postmarked no later than Friday, 29th of January, 2016.

You must include your name with any nomination. Nominations will be accepted only from natural persons active in fandom, or from full or supporting members of Contact 2016, the 2016 Australian National SF Convention. Where a nominator may not be known to the Ditmar subcommittee, the nominator should provide the name of someone known to the subcommittee who can vouch for the nominator’s eligibility. Convention attendance or membership of an SF club are among the criteria which qualify a person as “active in fandom”, but are not the only qualifying criteria. If in doubt, nominate and mention your qualifying criteria. If you received this email directly, you almost certainly qualify.

You may nominate as many times in as many Award categories as you like, although you may only nominate a particular person, work or achievement once. The Ditmar subcommittee, which is organised under the auspices the Standing Committee of the Natcon Business Meeting, will rule on situations where eligibility is unclear. A partial and unofficial eligibility list, to which everyone is encouraged to add, can be found here:

Wow – another year is just about to say good bye! Where has it gone? It has been an action packed year for me, so maybe that’s why it seems to have flown past. It’s been pretty successful year, too, with lots of highlights, but before I get into that, let’s look at my goals from 2014 and get the unachieved goals out of the way! Then I can move on to the good stuff…

The big goals for 2015:

Get that elusive pro sale!

Finish the YA novel and get it off for submission.

Catch up with Doctor Who.

Get my solo novel done.

Start another conversational review series about a series of books that are very dear to my heart

Try and get involved in some sort of news/discussion podcast

Let’s see:

Nope. I came close with one sale at 5c a word, and an anthology that would have given me a pro sale being put on hold.

Nope, but as you will read in the achievements section I made some good progress with this one

Nope. Don’t even want to talk about that!

Nope, but again feel happy with what I did achieve in that area.

Started a conversational review series, but not that one!

Nope, but have found the idea and other person, so that’s a start

So, as you can see, I didn’t do so well with the goals. But, now that the self flagellation is out of the way, here’s what I did achieve in 2015!

WRITING

Considering I only had one short story published in 2014, 2015 was a pretty good year on the writing front. I’ve given a comprehensive breakdown on my writing statistics here for those of you who love graphs and stuff, but the upshot was that I had:

While I didn’t meet my goal of having my own original solo novel published, the big news was that my first novel length work came out.

This has led to more tie-in work, and I am looking forward to being able to announce what I think will be my biggest news yet.

While the Secret Young Adult book isn’t finished yet, we made real progress, with the first ten chapters refined to the point we were happy to send them off to test readers. I got the first feedback email today and it is look good!

2016 is already shaping up to be an even bigger year, so stay tuned for more news as it comes.

CONVENTIONS

2015 was a bit of a jetsetting year for me. I was lucky enough to get visit New Zealand for their Natcon, and discovered that NZ fandom is incredibly welcoming and friendly. I also met some wonderful authors, and made some new friends.

Having fun with some new writer friends!

I had a great time at my home con of Continuum, getting to be on some great panels and generally just having fun.

This panel on Religion in Spec Fic was much more fun than I am making it look here!

I managed to make it back to the US this year for an incredible 4 week trip that took me from LA to New York, and plenty of places in between. While over there I went to Sasquan, the Worldcon in Spokane, Washington. As well as hanging out with the Brotherhood Without Banners, the greatest fan group in the Universe, I had the honour of accepting a Hugo for Galactic Suburbia. The Hugo Awards night will be indelibly etched in my memory, it was a truly wonderful night that was capped off with the Hugo Loser Party to end all parties!

And, last but not least, I went up to Canberra for Conflux, and as usual had a great time. There were many highlights, like a Paying for Our Passion panel, and experiencing the Cabinet of Oddities performance, where I had the privilege of hearing one of my stories set to music composed especially for it and played on flute.

The “Paying for Our Passion” panel

So, not a bad year for conventions!

AWARDS

I was lucky enough to be nominated for a couple of Ditmars this year, including another Atheling nod. I was a little sad that the Snapshot didn’t win, but given the quality of the category it was in I am not complaining–any of the winners would have been deserving!

BLOGGING

While we didn’t finish the New Who stuff, we did get some reviews done, and I also started a new series of reviews with Tehani as we Squeed Over Supergirl!

By far the most successful series on my blog was Paying for Our Passion, and again I must thank all the writers and editors who were willing to make themselves so vulnerable with some excellent posts on the sacrifices we make to pursue or passions.

PODCASTING

Galactic Chat had a quiet end to the year, but I did get the chance to interview some amazing people. If you haven’t already, you should check out the podcast. I also had my first ever podcast interview when I appeared on it myself.

GOALS FOR 2015

So, looking back, it was a pretty good year! Despite my abject failure to meet last year’s, I am going to set some goals for 2016:

FINALLY catch up on Doctor Who

start the new podcast I have planned

get the full version of the YA book out to test readers, if not an agent

make that elusive pro sale

And that will do for now. 🙂

Thank you to everyone who has read this blog over the course of the year, and to those who have supported and encouraged me in so many ways. I couldn’t have achieved any of the things I have listed without you. Wishing you all a Happy New Year, and hoping that 2016 is your best yet!

The 2015 Ditmar Awards Ballot has been released and, as always, I am surprised and delighted to see my name alongside some of my writing role models. I was very fortunate to have been included in some wonderful projects last year and to be nominated for awards on top of having so much fun seems almost cheating.

It’s always a bit surreal to look at the awards ballot and realise how many of the names on there are not only people I know, but people I am lucky enough to call friends. Of course, that makes voting hard at times!

I was saying on Facebook that when you look at this list and see the amazing talent on display, then think about the works that didn’t get nominated, you get a sense of the depth of the Aussie spec fic scene. You could create another couple of strong ballots without straining yourself, and that is a very healthy thing. That’s not in any way a criticism of the existing ballot–only so many things can get on there–but just an observation of how much great stuff is being done every year by Australians.

I have attached the details of how to vote below. Regardless of who you vote for, I do think it is important that everyone eligible to vote does so, because the more people engaged with the awards, the more validity they have.

Good luck to all the nominees, and whether you win or not, congratulations on your well deserved recognition!

Anyone who is a member of Swancon 40 (including supporting members) and anyone was who a member of Continuum 10 last year (who was eligible to vote in the 2014 Award) can vote in this year’s award. I strongly recommend that anyone who is eligible to vote exercises that right, as the more people voting, the better the views of readers are represented in the winners. You don’t have to vote in every category. Voting has opened, and will remain open until one minute before midnight AWST (ie. 11.59pm GMT+8) on Sunday, 22nd of March, 2015.

Best Fan Writer
———————————————————-
* Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work
* Tsana Dolichva, for body of work
* Bruce Gillespie, for body of work
* Katharine Stubbs, for body of work
* Alexandra Pierce for body of work
* Grant Watson, for body of work
* Sean Wright, for body of work

I feel like I have been a bit self promotional lately, with the FFANZ stuff, the ebook release and trying to boost the signal of the Galactic Chat interviews I have been lucky enough to do. So, I am going to bury my own eligible works right at the bottom of the post.

Don’t feel you need to read down that far, the important message is: make sure you nominate and vote in the Ditmars! There are so many amazing people in the Aussie scene, and they are producing so much good work. The list of eligibles will blow your mind. So, if you have loved someone’s work last year, why not nominate them?

Nominations for the 2015 Australian SF (“Ditmar”) awards are now open and will remain open until one minute before midnight Perth time on Sunday, 1st of February, 2015 (ie. 11.59pm, GMT+8). Postal nominations must be postmarked no later than Friday, 30th of January, 2015.

You must include your name with any nomination. Nominations will be accepted only from natural persons active in fandom, or from full or supporting members of Swancon 40, the 2015 Australian National SF Convention. Where a nominator may not be known to the Ditmar subcommittee, the nominator should provide the name of someone known to the subcommittee who can vouch for the nominator’s eligibility. Convention attendance or membership of an SF club are among the criteria which qualify a person as “active in fandom”, but are not the only qualifying criteria. If in doubt, nominate and mention your qualifying criteria. If you received this email directly, you almost certainly qualify.

You may nominate as many times in as many Award categories as you like, although you may only nominate a particular person, work or achievement once. The Ditmar subcommittee, which is organised under the auspices the Standing Committee of the Natcon Business Meeting, will rule on situations where eligibility is unclear. A partial and unofficial eligibility list, to which everyone is encouraged to add, can be found HERE.

While online nominations are preferred, nominations can be made in a number of ways:

I don’t have a huge amount of eligible work from 2014. I didn’t even enter my collection in the Aurealis Awards as it is only three stories, and I wouldn’t think it would be competitive with all the amazing anthologies and collected works we have seen over the past twelve months.

Something that I didn’t create, but was part of, and that I think was amazing (not through anything to do with me, but because of the creator) was Laura E. Goodin’s radio play, “Useless Questions”. I am not sure what category Laura would be eligible for that under, but I wanted to highlight it as something worth considering.

So. my list:

Best Short Story

“Our Land Abounds”, David McDonald, in Cold Comfort and Other Tales, Clan Destine Press.

Looking back, 2014 was a much better year than I realised. Even though I only had one story published, there were a number of significant milestones that are well worth celebrating.

But, first, let me get the negatives out of the way.

We lost some good people last year, and some people I care about had some tough times. That puts my problems into perspective, in the scheme of things I was very fortunate. So, I don’t really want to go into details as so many others have it so much worse, but during 2014 I struggled with some medical issues and, when added to my talent for taking too much on, I had a bit of a meltdown. The medical stuff is nothing life threatening, or anything for anyone to worry about, but enough to cause some issues. It’s not an excuse, but this did contribute to me messing up a couple of deadlines and letting some people down. You know who you are and, again, I apologise. It’s something I am very disappointed with myself in, and I hope that 2015 will be a much better year for that!

Looking back at the goals that I had set myself, I am disappointed to note that I still haven’t caught up on Doctor Who! Hopefully I can remedy that before Easter for reasons that will become clear later in this post.

I also haven’t made that first pro rate sale, though I do feel that I am getting closer and closer, and I might have another announcement to make soon..

But, on to the good things! There really were some wonderful moments, and I have a lot to be thankful for. And, it’s been great to feel like I am actually making some progress with my writing.

Unfortunately, I can’t share my biggest piece of news yet, but stay tuned as it will be announced around February.

Amongst the things I can talk about are:

After an eighteen year career in the field (pretty much straight out of Year 11), I left IT. I was seconded to our Editorial Department for 6 months in the position of Deputy Editor of one of our magazines (though I was essentially doing the Editor’s job). I can now announce that last week I signed a contract extending my contract and naming me Editor. So, I guess I can say that I am a full time editor and writer now! There are not many people who get the chance to make a living from writing, so I feel incredibly blessed to have this opportunity– it really has changed my life. And, this has been so beneficial to my own writing, both in what I am learning from editing, and because I am excited to be at work everyday instead being stressed and frustrated all the time. (which I know makes me very fortunate). I also think it has made me more productive, too, if there is a writing muscle, the more you use it the stronger it gets

From a fiction writing POV, one of the highlights of 2014 was being shortlisted for the WSFA Small Press Award. As I said at the time, seeing my name alongside all the past nominees and winners was a huge thrill and I was gobsmacked when I found out. I never expected to be nominated, let alone win, so I wasn’t that disappointed to lose–especially to a great story.

After two previous nominations, winning a William J. Atheling Jr Award for the New Who reviews. I have felt very privileged to get to work with Tehani and Tansy, and humbled to tie with Galactic Suburbia, one of my biggest influences. Hopefully I can catch up on the latest seasons soon!

The Ditmar for Galactic Chat. A huge amount of the credit for this needs to go to Sean Wright, our podcast overlord, and it was great to see him recognised for his hard work. It felt a bit weird winning an award for having the opportunity to get to talk to some of my writing heroes. Seems like a bit of a rort, really! lol

Which leads on to the interviews with Ken Liu and Kameron Hurley. Wow, talk about gushing fanboy moments. Just a hint: next year wills ee even more fanboying! I have a few more writing superstars lined up for you.

Being asked to return as part of the Aussie Snapshot team. This one was even bigger than the last one, and we managed to cover a huge cross section of the Aussie Spec Fic scene. If you haven’t read it yet, you are really missing out!

Even though I had a quiet year in publications, I managed to sell some stories and I have already have three new stories confirmed for 2015 (including a sale to Fablecroft and coeur de lion) as well as something a bit longer which I can’t talk about yet (and that is killing me).

Managing to make a good start on the collaborative young adult novel I am working on, It’s definitely starting to take shape now and has gotten to that point where it has developed some momentum, and the process that we decided to use seems to be working (big thanks to Amie Kaufman for her generosity with her time and advice. I am very excited about where it is heading, and you can expect to hear more about it in 2015

Helping my good friend, Laura Goodin, perform a radio play at Conflux. Hopefully there will be a version available for your listening pleasure soon

Beating “Hold Over Funds” to become the FFANZ delegate. I am really excited about heading over tot New Zealand in 2015, i am sure that it is going to be a blast. It looks like I need to be caught up on Doctor Who by then, though!

Aside from all these, there is something even more important to mention. I got to spend time with existing friends, made a number of new friends and, most of all, was continually reminded of what an amazing community we have in Australia. A number of my friends had some great moments of their own, and I was delighted to see their successes (and quite often got to help celebrate them, which is always fun).

The big goals for 2015:

Get that elusive pro sale!

Finish the YA novel and get it off for submission.

Catch up with Doctor Who.

Get my solo novel done.

Start another conversational review series about a series of books that are very dear to my heart

Try and get involved in some sort of news/discussion podcast

And, that’s probably enough for now!

Hopefully I will be at a few cons in 2015. I always try and get to Continuum, and I have brought my membership and booked my hotel for the Worldcon on in Spokane. And, of course, I will be in NZ for their Natcon.

I am looking forward to 2015, which I think might be my biggest yet, and I will be hoping for the same for you!

Yet again I have been very bad with keeping up to date on my blog. But, I do have lots of exciting stuff to talk about!

Firstly, I have started a new job! I am working for the same organisation, but I have been seconded to our Editorial Department and am now responsible for a fortnightly magazine. It’s been a steep learning curve, but I am loving it. So, I guess now I am a professional writer/editor. The last issue was the first I did completely alone and having survived that I think I am going to be all right – but it was a long fortnight. The downside is that I have been so consumed by learning the ropes that I have let some stuff slide and let some people down with other things. 🙁

I am also very excited to announce the sale of my story, “Her face like lightning”, to Fablecroft’s “Insert Title Here”. You can find out more details here.

I am currently working on two major projects that I hope to be able to announce in a month or so, but they are taking up most of my writing time. If they work out, they will be a big deal but until contracts are signed I will be keeping it quiet.

In June I went along to Continuum X and had an amazing time. I am a bit biased, being on the committee and all, but it seemed to be a smashing success. I spent a fair bit of time running around trying to help with organisational matters, but I also managed to catch up with heaps of friends, and make some new ones. My panels went reasonably well, and I even managed to organise a reprint of one of my stories. Well done to everyone who contributed to making it an awesome convention!

And, in a very surprising turn of events, we won both our categories in the Ditmars! I honestly didn’t expect it, given the other nominees, so it was a wonderful surprise. In the Atheling, New Who Reviews tied with Galactic Suburbia. As Galactic Suburbia was the first Aussie podcast I started listening to, and has had a huge influence on my perception of the genre, this was a huge honour. It’s been a great deal of fun working with Tansy and Tehani, so a big thank you to them for all their hard work and letting me be part of it (and a shout out to our guests over the years – Lynne Thomas, Jo Anderton and Kathleen Jennings).

Then, in the Best Fan Publication, Galactic Chat won! Again, I have been fortunate to get to work with an incredible group of people, and Sean has worked extremely hard in his role as our fearless leader. We were very excited to see him win Best Fan Writer, as well – a very deserved result.

But, looking at the rest of the nominees in all the categories, it was an extremely strong list – and congratulations to all the winners, and nominees, for the wonderful work you are doing! You can see the full list here.

Well, the past few weeks have been intense, so much so that I forgot all about this (after the first bit of squeeing), but the 2014 Ditmar Award ballot has been released, and I feature twice (highlighted in bold below)!!!

I have been very fortunate in how many wonderful people I have met since I first entered the scene, not only are most of the names on the ballot good friends, I have also had the chance to work with some amazingly talented people. Both Galactic Chat and the New Who reviewing stuff are so much fun to do, and that comes down to the great company in which I find myself.

Given that in both categories I am up against Hugo nominated works I don’t expect to win, but that’s more than okay. I am just proud to see my name up alongside so many people I respect and admire. Thank you to all those who nominated Galactic Chat and Reviewing New Who!

Whether you vote for me or not, please do make sure you do vote if you are eligible to do so. The more people who do, the more respectability the Ditmars have as the representation of the opinions of the entire Aussie spec fic community.

Good luck to all the nominees!

Voting has now opened, and will remain open until one minute before midnight AEST (ie. 11.59pm, GMT+11),
Wednesday, 28th of May, 2014.